Family Agriculture

What is family farming?

Family farming in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is defined as a sector made up of productive establishments run by families, which mainly use their own labor.

This sector accounts for more than 80% of all farms in LAC, and it takes up 35% of the cultivated land, contributing 40% of the production, and creating 64% of agriculture-related jobs.

There are an estimated 15 million family units in the region, covering nearly 400 million hectares, owned by 14 million small farmers.
In the case of Spain, 93 % of the holdings surveyed have a person in charge, working together with their family as farmhands.

Source: Inter-American Development Bank.The Next Global Breadbasket: How Latin America Can Feed the World. 2014. P11